Useless ballast? Why the body needs fiber
Often speak about the usefulness of fiber. And what exactly is it useful to the body, is it possible to do without it and where to get fiber in your normal life?
Says the candidate of medical Sciences, the doctor-gastroenterologist Constantine Spahiu:
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— The usefulness of fiber may seem paradoxical: it is a substance in foods is not absorbed. It passes through the digestive tract transit. And there was a time when such components of food called dietary fiber. The implication was that they do not need ballast. Then they tried even to get rid of. For example, this began to make the flour very fine grind, which removed the slightest impurity. By the way, it is very popular today. It is known to all wheat flour used in white bread, baguettes, pastries and many more where.
What might be a useful substance which is not absorbed and nothing brings our body?
The fact that all it does is useful in the process of moving through the intestines.
- First, fiber makes food volume without increasing its caloric value. Due to this, a person quickly becomes saturated and does not overeat.
- Second, regulates the stool and prevents the development of constipation. Fiber binds water and thereby gives mass to the stool volume and of normal consistency.
- Thirdly, fiber prevents acidification of the environment in the colon and thereby prevents multiplication of harmful bacteria, for which an acidic environment is favorable.
- Fourth, due to the above qualities, it prevents the development of many diseases of the intestine and in colitis, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, but also colon cancer.
- Fifth, the fiber is like a sponge absorbs harmful and toxic substances and removes them, reducing the toxic load on the body.
- Sixthly, it is about the same records for yourself cholesterol and fats, reducing their absorption. And this action is well understood, there are many studies showing that consumption of large quantities of food with fiber reduces cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
Candidate of chemical Sciences Peter Samples:
— Fiber is a wonderful substance. In fact, it consists entirely of glucose molecules, an excess of which, as you know, is very harmful. Like all sugars, glucose promotes weight gain and development of diabetes of the 2nd type. Its level increases in the blood in diabetes. How is it that glucose is harmful, and it consists of cellulose helpful? Quite simply, the unraveling of the structure of cellulose, is a polymer — a long chain, the links of which are glucose molecules, usually is from 6 to 12 thousand. And they are so firmly connected that fiber is not digested by enzymes in the digestive tract. So eaten cellulose to glucose is not broken down and blood sugar increases.
Not everyone will believe me, but there is another substance, which is very similar to cellulose and is also a polymer of glucose is starch. It is similar to the branched and tangled “chain” of glucose molecules. The difference is that the starch in the digestive tract is broken down to glucose, but cellulose is not. This difference is due to the fact that the glucose molecules in different ways is connected in these substances.